Archives: Events

The Saturday Reading Group is for anyone who loves to read, socialize in English, and meet new people. For this meeting, the group will read Notes of a Scandal by Zoë Heller.

Barbara, a veteran history teacher at a comprehensive school in London, is a lonely, unmarried woman in her early sixties, and she is eager to find a close friend. However, she reveals that she has been unable to make a previous friendship last as she was considered by previous friends to be domineering and demanding. Her former friend, teacher Jennifer Dodd, even threatened her with an injunction if she tried contacting her again. When Bathsheba “Sheba” Hart is hired as an art teacher, Barbara immediately feels that they might become close friends. When Sheba invites Barbara for Sunday lunch with her family, she is ecstatic and gives the lunch date enormous significance…

Meetings are once a month on Saturday afternoons starting at 3 pm. Open to all library members. To sign up please contact the group coordinator at bookgroup@ellia.org.

The garden club invites you to discover the beautiful gardens in the area!

This will be a guided visit in English to the beautiful gardens of Manoir de la Groye in Saint-Saturnin-Sur-Loire. The Garden Club is open to all library members and offers visits once a month to a garden between April and October. For more information and/or to sign up for this visit, please send an email to Sylvie Leys  at elliagardenclub@gmail.com.

If you would like to do textile arts while speaking in English, this activity is for you! Participants create textile pieces of their choice using any technique that suits them: embroidery, patchwork, quilting, weaving, collages. It is also a great opportunity for each person to learn new techniques.

Covid protocol require that you bring your own materials. Open to library members. If you would like to join the group which meets once a month, if possible, please sign up at the front desk.

Are you a new mom or dad and looking to meet other English-speaking parents in the area? The BYOB (Bring Your Own Baby) group is a way for families with young children to connect and chat about anything and everything related to the journey into parenthood. This group is for English-speaking parents with a baby (or babies!) under 3 years old so be sure to bring them along! Bilingual and multilingual families are welcome, too. The group will meet one Saturday a month from 4:15-5:15pm in the Kids Corner of the library.

This activity is free for library members. For more information or to sign up, please contact the group leader.

“Books and Tea” is a monthly meeting for bookworms and tea drinkers (but coffee drinkers are welcome too!). Bring a book you’ve really enjoyed, talk about it and pass it on! No need to sign up, just come and enjoy!

Welcome to “Write Here, Write Now”!

Writing and sharing: join this series of workshops for people who love to write in English and don’t mind sharing what they’ve written (although this sharing is not mandatory). Springboard exercises by themes, genres, characters, time, space, imagination, real facts, even extending to other art forms will help you get your creative juices flowing…all in the company of lovers of literature. Mathieu Huvelin, a library volunteer, will delicately guide you through different ways to stimulate your writing, keep you inspired and help you get to know the writer within yourself.

“You can make anything by writing” (C.S. Lewis). Following Lewis’s invitation, let’s explore boundlessness: the world at large as well as your own secret gardens through words…while discovering the unknown realms of the writing of others.

Workshops will be run Wednesday evenings from 6 to 8 pm at the library from mid-September to mid-June on a bi-monthly basis, except during school holidays. They are free for library members (maximum of 10 participants). For more information and/or to sign up, please contact the group leader.

Join us for our ever-popular game night and pizza party! Cost is 7 euros (covers pizza and non-alcoholic drinks, 5 euros for native English speakers and children under 13). Event starts at 6 pm sharp. Last entry at 6:15 pm. First come, first serve with 40 participants max. Children under 13 need to be accompanied by an adult.

Due to the extreme heat this activity has been rescheduled for Saturday, June 25th.

The June read for the book club is “Wake” by Anna Hope.

A brilliant debut for readers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, in which three women must deal with the aftershocks of WWI and its impact on the men in their lives—a son, a brother and a lover. Their tragic connection is slowly revealed as the book unfolds.

Wake: 1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep 2) Ritual for the dead 3) Consequence or aftermath.

Hettie, a dance instructress at the Palais, lives at home with her mother and her brother, mute and lost after his return from the war. One night, at work, she meets a wealthy, educated man and has reason to think he is as smitten with her as she is with him. Still there is something distracted about him, something she cannot reach…Evelyn works at the Pensions Exchange through which thousands of men have claimed benefits from wounds or debilitating distress. Embittered by her own loss, more and more estranged from her posh parents, she looks for solace in her adored brother who has not been the same since he returned from the front…Ada is beset by visions of her son on every street, convinced he is still alive. Helpless, her loving husband of 25 years has withdrawn from her. Then one day a young man appears at her door with notions to peddle, like hundreds of out of work veterans. But when he shows signs of being seriously disturbed—she recognizes the symptoms of “shell shock”—and utters the name of her son she is jolted to the core…

The lives of these three women are braided together, their stories gathering tremendous power as the ties that bind them become clear, and the body of the unknown soldier moves closer and closer to its final resting place.

To join the book club please send an email to the group coordinator here.

Due to the extreme heat this activity has been cancelled. Rendez-vous in September for a new year of walking and talking together! Dates to be posted soon!